“Make it stop.”
There should be a law against phones ringing in the middle of the night. Zara squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the annoying sound. But it wasn’t just her cell buzzing on the bedside table—a land line was ringing too.
Wait. She didn’t have a land line at her house.
At last, she pried open an eye…and realized from the sunlight pouring in the window that not only was it not the middle of the night, but she was also lying across a man’s bare chest.
The very well built, shockingly sexy bare chest of Rory Sullivan—her onetime nemesis, now one-week-only lover.
Was this going to happen every time she woke up? Was she always going to be taken aback by how tightly her arms were wrapped around him? Or at some point during the next six days, would it fully sink in that the two of them were together in the most intimate of ways, however temporarily?
After being adversaries for the past year, she supposed the new terms of their relationship would throw anyone off. And she couldn’t help but think that if waking up in bed with Rory could send her reeling this hard, just imagine how messed up she’d be if she fell in love with him…and then had to let him go.
No, she definitely wouldn’t make that mistake.
She relinquished her hold on him enough to look up into his sleeping face. How on earth he managed to stay asleep through the annoyingly insistent ringing and buzzing, she had no idea. But since he wasn’t able to see her mooning over him, she couldn’t stop a little sigh of pleasure at the memory of all the delicious things they’d done together.
When a man was that good at sex, a person couldn’t fault herself for being only human and appreciating it.
Reluctantly, she rolled over to pick up both the hotel phone and her cell at the same time, one at each ear. “This is Zara.” Though it was nearly noon, according to the clock on the bedside table—Rory had given her one glorious orgasm after another until nearly sunrise—she still wasn’t happy about being woken up.
“Hey, sis!” Brittany’s voice was extra perky, especially coming through two phone lines at once. “I had hoped you, me, Cameron, and Rory could all have brunch together this morning, but I’ve been calling your cell since ten a.m. with no answer.” Perky gave way to pouty as she added, “I finally had the hotel also call your room to make sure you were there, even though it’s now so late that we have another engagement to head to soon.”
Yet again, Zara gave silent thanks that Rory had worn her out enough with his brilliant moves in the sack that they had both slept through the buzzing of her phone and breakfast. “Rory and I were up late last night.” She was glad to be able to insert a little truth this morning into her lies from the night before. “He’s still sleeping.”
The big hand moving across her hip let her know that Rory was now wide awake. With a gentle tug, he drew her back into the bed so that her back was flush against his front. His very aroused front.
Mmmm. Zara nearly hung up both phones. After all, she could talk to Brittany anytime, but the clock was ticking down on six days of what had to be the best lovemaking on the planet.
“Wow, that must have been some night,” Brittany said, sounding strangely subdued. “I was really hoping to see you this morning, even if just for five minutes.”
That was all it took for Zara to give up on a few more sexy minutes with Rory. She had never been able to resist Brittany’s requests to spend time together. How could she, when as teenagers they had been each other’s only lifelines after each losing a parent and finding themselves plopped into a new family?
“If you give me ten minutes to get dressed,” Zara said, “I’ll come down to see you two off.”
“Yay!” The smile was back in her stepsister’s voice. “We don’t have to leave for a half hour, so I’ll order coffee for the four of us.”
As soon as Zara hung up, Rory spoke from behind her. “If you can get dressed in one minute,” he said, obviously having figured out the pertinent details from her side of the conversation with Brittany, “that means we still have nine minutes to have some fun before we go downstairs.”
Despite the pressure weighing on her chest at knowing she was going to have to make small talk with Brittany and Cameron again, Zara was glad to know she wasn’t going to have to endure them alone.
She rolled over to face him. “As tempted as I am to see what tricks you can pull out of your hat with a nine-minute deadline, I should probably throw myself into the shower. And since we’re supposed to check out by noon, you should do the same.”
“Nine minutes with you in a shower?” He gave her a very wicked grin. “Consider yourself done.”
She laughed again, even as she made herself slide from the bed and head for the bathroom. “If you actually manage to make me see fireworks in the next…” She looked at the digital clock beside the bed. “Eight minutes, I’ll be very impressed.”
She was turning on the water and stepping into the shower enclosure when she felt his lips on the back of her neck and his naked body pressed against hers. Though the water was warm, she shivered.
“Let’s get you under the water.” He moved them both under the spray, his hands roving over her breasts as he separated her legs with his thigh.
She’d never been this responsive to a man’s touch before, never felt like she was already on the edge with the barest whisper of his lips and hands over her. Barely sixty seconds in the shower with Rory, and all it took was one large, callused hand slipping slowly over her skin, from her breasts to her stomach, then finally between her thighs, for her to nearly come apart.
“You have no idea how much I want you,” he murmured against her earlobe as he slid one finger, and then a second, into her more-than-ready body.
“If it’s as much as I want you,” she whispered back as her inner muscles clenched against him, “I do.”
The next thing she knew, he had taken his hand away and thrust into her. He felt so hard and hot and perfect that she sobbed out his name, the sound reverberating inside the tile-and-glass enclosure. She pressed her hands flat on the tile as she arched her hips against his, wanting more, needing everything he could give her.
One hand came around her hips for leverage, while the other cupped her face. The gentle way he turned her cheek so that he could look into her eyes was a surprising counterpoint to the wonderfully rough way he was taking the rest of her. Exactly the way she wanted to be taken.
And when he kissed her, though he hadn’t spoken, she could swear he was calling her sweetheart, this time with the passionate brush of his lips over hers. Yet again, it sent her straight to heaven, with Rory’s mouth, hands, and body urging her pleasure on and on and on.
As he let himself go, his groan of pleasure sounded like a roar in the small room. It was the same roar of victory she would have made herself if she could have found the breath for it.
She was still panting when she felt his hands in her hair, massaging in shampoo.
“Good?”
She turned in his arms to face him. “Amazing.” She reached up to gather some excess suds from her hair, then mirrored his movements as she washed his hair. She couldn’t resist giving him a slightly snarky look as she said, “I think I’ll call you Mr. Speedy from now on.”
“And here I thought for sure you were finally going to give me a compliment.” He followed up his words by dunking her head beneath the water.
She was sputtering when she came up for air, but he had already danced out of her way to rinse off. “I’ll get you back for that, you know,” she warned him.
He had the nerve to grin. “I’m counting on it.”
And damn him, she was grinning too as she soaped up, rinsed off, then stepped out onto the bath mat to grab a towel.
“Not so fast.” He took the towel from her and began running it over her curves to dry her off. “How many minutes do we have left?”
She was sorely tempted by the heat—and the promise of even more pleasure—in his eyes. But she couldn’t forget how sad Brittany had seemed about not seeing her this morning to say good-bye. “Not enough even for Mr. Speedy,” she teased.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Want to bet?”
Yes! But she made herself say, “We really should get dressed and head downstairs.” That was when it hit her. “Your clothes are in your room. If they see you wearing the same thing as last night, they’ll wonder why you didn’t already have your clothes in my room.”
“Don’t worry.” Now that she was dry, he rubbed the towel over his own wet skin. Skin she was dying to wet all over again with her tongue. “It won’t take me more than a couple of minutes to run upstairs, grab my bag, and change.”
While she rummaged in her overnight bag for jeans and a top, he quickly put on yesterday’s clothes.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, then drew her close and kissed her before grabbing her room key and heading for the door.
She stared at the door for several long seconds after he left. No question, the hot sex had scrambled her brain. But it was his kiss—the kind of kiss people who were actually together gave each other when they were about to leave a room—that truly had her head spinning.
It must have been an accident. The two of them having hot shower sex in a hotel room had probably made him forget for a second that what they were doing wasn’t real.
That they didn’t have a future.
That they were together only temporarily…until they most decidedly were not together anymore come Saturday.